Asger Jorn

The Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914-1973) stands out as a remarkable figure in Nordic art history. His participation in the avant-garde currents that emerged in Postwar Europe, perhaps most of all his involvement in founding the artist-group COBRA (COpenhagen, BRussels and Amsterdam), influenced the way abstract art developed in the Postwar years.

Days Have Gone (1963) is one of Jorn’s late works but well illustrates a problem he grappled with throughout much of his artistic practice: to liberate painting and allow for spontaneity. This abstract work shows the tracks of powerfully expressive brushstrokes. The paint is slathered in thick layers of strong colour: blue, green, violet, orange, yellow and red, not to mention accents of black that can trigger associations to French Tachisme and Jackson Pollock’s action paintings. The motif seems to have a humanoid being in the lower left corner. It grimaces widely and stares wildly. Is it looking towards the upper part of the picture, to an eye-catching field of red, blue, orange and white? The mood, in any case, is clearly uncontrolled, almost brutal. Days Have Gone is a good example of what Asger Jorn and the COBRA artists wanted to communicate through their works. Another apt instantiation is Karel Appel’s Grey Nude/Nude Gris (1960), also included in this exhibition.

The COBRA Group’s program was a reaction to what its founders perceived as the sterile aesthetics of modernistic abstract painting. COBRA responded to this 'lifeless' art by offering a type of dynamic and spontaneous experimental art built on variations of so-called 'primitive' and 'outsider' expressions. The artists gathered inspiration from, among other things, popular culture, folk art, Norse mythology and children’s art. The group’s general goal was to promote spontaneity and creativity in artistic expression in order to create a new, radical art form. Yet Asger Jorn’s more personal goal was to fuse the Danish idea of 'spontaneous abstraction' with a painterly aesthetic. In Days Have Gone we see this project carried out successfully. The work has a dynamic expression and the technique seems spontaneous, almost automatic. It is a portrait of an animal-like humanoid, not unlike a troll or monster in a fairytale or myth. It is an artwork that not only represents movement, but is, in itself, a vital movement. Asger Jorn’s works reveal an abstract Nordic expressionism where powerful colours and vibrant brushstrokes challenge us to participate in the artist’s inner life and conception of reality.

TS